All the Difference
by Hunter the Pyro
Summary: The seven Survivors, along with their three Infected tagalongs, find themselves at Fort Alpha, a massive military complex set up as a small city. Seven months after rescue, Katelyn, with a coma and a genetic mutation unlike what anybody's seen, may just be the ticking time bomb to end everything. Includes crap cameos! Action! Shotgun brides! Drama! Francis! Over-emphasis!
1. Prologue

_Prologue_

_8:25 AM, EST_

_Seven months, two weeks, three days, thirteen hours, one minute and two seconds after First Infection_

* * *

_"It's been some time since this virus first showed up. Now, it's our turn to come back from Hell. Fort Alpha was once an old military compound for the United States Army. When the Green Flu hit, it was quickly used for evacuation, thanks to its helipads, massive weapons supply, and fortified barriers. Afterwards, remaining survivors took over and made it into a makeshift safe zone. Today, Fort Alpha is one of the head defenses in these times against the Green Flu virus. We've survived attacks with 50 Tanks each, completely cured several Infected, and we are going to stop at nothing to end this disease for everyone affected, and ensure our losses were not in vain."_

_\- Commander Alexander William Overbeck, Fort Alpha_

* * *

**-Kate-**

* * *

It has been exactly seven months, one week, three days, fourteen hours, thirty-two minutes and twelve seconds since we escaped from the bridge. I remember everything that happened, down to the very fine details. The window of the Black Hawk had a sticker with "DO NOT OPEN" on it, and three small Witch scratches on the outside. It took Jason fifty-three seconds to get Nick to the chopper after he threw a pipebomb in the center of the bridge. Exactly five seconds after the chopper took off, jets bombed the bridge until it was consumed by the water below. My... 'disorder' had left me sick twice, once at the sugar mill, once immediately after our chopper landed at a military base. That was seven months, five days, sixteen hours, four minutes and thirty-two seconds ago. They had swarmed us, testing the Survivors to see if they were clean. Ellis, Louis, and Zoey were discovered as Carriers, and were taken somewhere for treatment. The rest were immune.

They tested Jason, Elizabeth and me next. Jason was infected, of course, but could not spread it. Elizabeth's body was almost clear of the virus.

The other Survivors (Nick, Coach, and Rochelle, that is; Francis had left immediately after getting the OK to) asked why I had to be tested twice. The doctors said nothing, running a small blood test on me like everyone else. Then they did it again.

And again.

I could see their confusion. The test didn't read infected. In fact, it said nothing at all. They tested Nick one more time to make sure the device was working (Which it was), then tested me once more with their last pricker. It gave no results.

I had to be literally dragged away, the others trying to fight the soldiers that accompanied the doctors. It wasn't until Coach broke it up that they let me go with the doctors. That was a whole fourteen minutes three seconds after we landed. Nick walked with them the whole way, making sure nothing happened. I remembered how little he trusted the military. He watched them, watched me, said nothing. They put me through several scanners, machines, tests. None of them responded. They ran Nick through the same ones. An old leg wound and a mildly high blood pressure, but otherwise fine. They tried me again. The CT scans showed up blank, as if there was nobody there, or didn't even work at all. Blood scans ran endlessly, but gave no results. They put my blood under a microscope but couldn't find anything wrong, but they found very little right. It was too bright. Everything hurt. I wouldn't speak. What would I say? I couldn't explain what was happening. I knew less than them.

They kept trying for two hours five minutes. Then another hour, three minutes and two seconds. And another three hours, six minutes and seventeen seconds. I was then restrained and kept in a research lab for five months, two weeks, four days and twelve hours.

My file was recorded on computer 7134T-3212 . The clearance code to view the folder is 535. In it is 275 files holding all tests and scans on me. They all are blank or "unknown". The room containing the computer is locked with a keypad combination of 16, 4, 32, 14, and 3. In front of that door is a hallway that is exactly two yards long. At the end is a normal elevator. Everyone uses it and the other five to go around the base's main building, which is thirteen stories high. I'm not in any of them. To get to my room, one would have to find a hidden compartment and type 23617 into the keypad that is inside, in which the elevator would travel to the computer's floor. If they were to type 52412, they would end up on my floor.

I noticed these numbers... My coma gave me time to think. Time to make sense of things as they fell apart in my mind. When I connected the numbers, I knew exactly when and where I'd be when I would awake from the coma.

It's funny how things work.

Right?

I haven't been awake for these past five months. I haven't seen Jason for these past seven months. I haven't felt right for these past seven months, either. I want to know why. Why I can't speak. Why I can't wake up. Why. Why? _Why?_

I've been wanting to ask why. I've wanted answers.

But now? At this second, exactly seven months, one week, three days, fourteen hours, thirty-two minutes and twelve seconds after my last sane thoughts? After my confidence assuring that we'll be fine, shattered to oblivion? And now, after being in a coma for so long?

I just want them all to _die._


	2. Meet Mike

**WARNING: SHITTY CAMEOS AHEAD**

**You have been warned. **

**Anyways, this is my remake of Different. Yeah, that old crappy one. I know some of you liked it, but I really didn't like writing it. It jumped into the middle of things for no reason more times than in a Call of Duty campaign. So, I'll start over, and start differently. **

**After all, a little change in the writing can make... ALL THE DIFFERENCE. **

**Shit puns aside, I know you probably came here to read, hope you enjoy it.**

* * *

_10:43 AM, EST_

_One week and three days prior to the Proxy event_

_Meet Mike_

* * *

Mike. Who's Mike? There's many in the world. Some famous, most not. But which one?

Mike's just an ordinary white-collar guy. He likes to watch sports like other guys. He works at an office, doing tech service or other offhand side-jobs. Some days, he might take a break with the guys, and watch the world around him while they discuss what's new. He's more or less the 'nerd' of the group; he's the go-to guy when something isn't working right, but that's fine. It just gives him another reason to enjoy his job every time he gets to sit down and work a keyboard, or open up electronics and toy with them.

Mike also likes to think in third person for some reason. Why, Mike? Is it fun to think of life as a story? Well, yes. It really is.

I snapped back out of my daydreaming. None of that was true. Well, it was, but it wasn't in the context I'd prefer. I'm the tech guy to keep the electric fence bordering the base functioning. I set up the controls for the remote sentries. I have to repair the terminals almost daily for the underground research facility when a stray Smoker or something gets loose. Maybe it all wouldn't be so bad if, perhaps, I didn't have to go out alone to fix things. Or, perhaps, if I had at least one person here respect what I do. Or, not that it's important anymore, if I got paid. At least in some form. Food, probably. But nope. Offhand jobs that would probably kill me just get a "Thanks" and a pat on the back if I'm lucky. It's quite an honor if I get a nod to go with it. At least today, I got my first day off. We get maybe one day off a month, or at least that's what I'm told, and I'm glad to finally get it. For once, I can bring my thoughts together since... this all started. I think it's been... It has to be at least seven months, maybe eight since the flu first came up. They said it was just like the annual flu, coming at an odd time, yes, but nonetheless ordinary. Vaccines came out within a week, and the routine "go to your pharmacy for your flu shot" talk came. However it wasn't long before people noticed that the vaccines did almost nothing. Anyone who received it still ended up with the same risk. I guess I was just lucky enough to be antisocial. Didn't come across anyone who was sick, no problems for me.

Then the deaths began coming. The news would have a new list weekly of people who had died to the flu, and it turned almost daily. People who hadn't died and had it were aggressive, almost hostile towards others. Neighborhoods became quarantined, police and even SWAT had to come in to keep people from escaping. When evacuations started, they almost had to keep it secretive, so those in quarantined locations wouldn't hear.

Then the first victim came back.

People had been told from the beginning to go to Mercy Hospital to treat the Green Flu. The amount of people that came into the office shrunk from our group of about 30 to a mere 12. Police came one day to test us to make sure we weren't at risk of getting the virus when a man kicked the door down. He was mangled, bloody, and a sickly, pale yellow. The cops hesitated before one of them yelled at the guy to stand down. Instead, the psycho charged him before his head exploded from the pistol round. We were evacuated to Fort Alpha almost immediately after. The cops got word in their radios that, in short, "there were fucking zombies." They led us to the top of the building just as a chopper landed. The man inside waved for us to get in, and as we did people - most likely infected - began pouring in down the stairway. I could still hear their angry screams.

The chopper barely touched down before people began rushing towards it. I almost had a heart attack until I was sure they were normal people. Or, military. Close enough. Turned out that they've been bringing people here since it started for it's sheer size. The place was huge. And I mean huge. The complex was about 9 or 10 football fields across, surrounded by 20 foot high steel walls that had to be at least 5 feet thick. The buildings, shelters, and other structures within all surrounded one massive, thirteen story tower. Smaller towers lined the outskirts, along the walls, each with at least two men with guns facing outside the fort. The soldiers almost forced us out of the chopper, and ran blood tests on each of us to make sure we were clean. Three of my co-workers were sent away because they were "at-risk," as the soldiers said.

After several months, we all got into a sort of routine. My technical skills helped me get somewhat of a "normal" job on tech maintenance. My friend Parker, who had left us years ago to serve in the military, had turned out to be there, and we began to hang out a bit more. Everyone, having different duties or jobs, had scarce free time, but when we did get together it was almost like old times. Almost like old times. The fear of zombies over our heads did a good job of keeping thing's from being normal. I don't care how safe this place is, I always feel like something's watching me.

I was again snapped out of my thoughts by the phone. I almost forgot where I was until I saw the familiar, plain, white ceiling of my bedroom. I checked the time and saw that it was only 10 in the morning. Why was I up so early in the first place? Slowly, I rolled off the bed and fumbled for my glasses. I guess spending half a morning daydreaming about the past only works for so long before life comes to drive me insane. "Schmidt's room," I mumbled, "I thought I had the day off." I was named after my father, who had serious PTSD after working at some creepy kid's Pizza Hut, so I was used to it when on the other end I heard "Sorry, Junior. But you got something special today." It was the voice of Kevin, my 'supervisor.'

"Special?" I asked, walking to the kitchen. The coffee machine needed to be emptied. "We have two different meanings to special, Kevin." The machine beeped to life as I put fresh water in, and I pressed the button as it took its agonizing time to make a pot. "Well, first off the security cameras down in the research labs have been glitching out, and we'll need someone to have a look at those before the end of the day." I sighed, watching the coffee drip into the pot. "Fine, I'll have a look at them. What's so special about that?"

"Oh, no that's the normal part," Kevin replied, "we also want you to interview and evaluate... I guess what you can call an intern. Tomorrow he'll take a portion of your jobs and you can watch and review his work after. That way we might get you someone to help take the load off." An intern? That'd be nice. "Uh, great, I'm fine with that," I say, "when do I interview him?"

"We'd prefer some time before noon, but whenever you can today is fine," he says. "Just use the binder you got from your interview to question him. Should be a piece of cake." I nodded my head, then forgot he couldn't see it and said 'Ok.' "Alright, have a good day," he said before hanging up. I walked over to the couch and sat down, turning the TV on and leaving it on the news channel. It was mostly for updates on the country and how shitty it's becoming. I changed into acceptable work clothes, found a book I hadn't read, and got at least a bit of time to relax.

About ten minutes passed before I decided to go pour the now-finished pot of coffee into a thermos and head out. The elevator was right next to my room, so it didn't take long to walk to. "Hold the door!" I heard, and a familiar face popped up hurrying to the door. It was Kyle, who came up a few days ago Infected but sane with his friend John. Neither of them could be cured, but nobody really minded. I thought personally it was cool. They seemed to, as well. "How's it going, Kyle?" I asked as he stepped in. "Oh, same old," he replied, "go for a jog, meet some friends, help downstairs." Kyle was tall. And that's saying something, considering I was pretty lean myself. In high school I was called 'Jolly Waluigi.' He was definitely my favorite Mario character, and still is. But Kyle is _huge_. He stood at six feet ten inches, and looked down at everyone. No matter how kind he was, he was still downright intimidating. I've never seen him angry, but he looked like someone who could kill with a mean enough stare.

Or with his Smoker tongue.

"So, I heard you were heading out soon," I tried to start a new conversation as the elevator took its time to reach the bottom. "Yeah, John and I don't stick around for long," he replied, leaning against the wall of the elevator. "Might head back north." I nodded as the elevator stopped at the bottom floor, and we split up to go our separate ways. I walked down the main hallway to a room labeled 'MED RESEARCH.' Behind it was yet another hallway, which left the main building and led me to a smaller, two-story building. I would have guessed I could have a better conversation with Kyle, but he's all over the complex usually. I'm surprised we bumped into each other in the elevator.

As the doors opened, I handed my card to the security guard behind the desk. "How's it going," he asks, swiping it into the computer. "Pretty good," I reply, "I might get an intern." He makes a silent 'wow' as he hands my card back. "I thought you could just be everywhere at once with the jobs you have." I chuckle as the door slides open. I walk inside to a hospital type area, however instead of patients and doctors waltzing about it's a few sane Infecteds with scientists in some rooms and just scientists inspecting something in others. Lots of science stuff. Not my kind of science stuff. I reach the end of the hall, labeled 'TECH/SECURITY ONLY,' I knock before opening, and find another security guard inside. "Hey, what's the problem?" I ask. He gestures at the screens and stands up. "See for yourself," he mutters, clearly annoyed. He points to a small collection of monitors. "It's only these ones, too. The rest don't get any worse than crappy cameras get, but these," he points to them again, "they just go out." I nod, sitting down myself. I could hear my father's insane muttering in my head.

"Camera goes out, check the ones around it. They know what's wrong."

Holy shit, I wish I knew what fucked him up so badly.

I looked at the cameras around the glitching ones. It wasn't a technical problem, I knew this immediately. If it were a connection issue then all the cameras nearby would be out or look like shit, but even CAM 3C works fine, and it's right across the hall from the worst camera. I switched through a few more cameras before noticing a sign on CAM B that said "SMOKER FUME RESEARCH," and pointed in the other cam's direction. "Oh, that's what's wrong," I mutter, the guard coughing silently. "What is?" he asks. I point to the camera with the Smoker research sign. "See this? All the cameras glitching out are in that area. The smoke the Smokers make is probably just getting in the cameras or messing with the lenses." He makes a silent 'oh' as I e-mail the scientists down in the labs about it. An easy fix would just be to simply better protect the cameras, perhaps put them behind windows, or make them less open. I've seen the cameras, they're open and have wires exposed and bunched behind them. It wasn't a very high-tech problem or solution, but I really didn't mind. My thoughts had already drifted over to this new intern. Would he really be worth the trouble? Or would it end up being another guy who's blown the dust out of his computer before? That's almost the intelligence of the last tech guy. His ideas were unhelpful and would probably make thing worse had I not come here in the first place. I think he became a watchman or something.

As with most assignments, nobody really tells me where to go when I have to do something. They just assume I'd know what they meant and go, which most of the time is the case. However I have no idea where I'd find an intern. Is there a legitimate intern housing somewhere in this complex I don't know about? I returned to the main building and entered the elevator again. I'd have to get my interviewer binder from my room. A lot of the time I'd have to question newcomers to see if they could be of use around Fort Alpha, so one of the officers gave me an 'interview binder,' filled with basic questions and checklists to better organize what I thought about who I'd interview. Just before the elevator door closed, a hand stretched out and got in before they'd crush it, and the door reopened. A dark man stepped in and apologized to me, to which I shrugged. "No worries," I said, stepping aside to give him room. "What floor?"

"Uh...nine, floor nine," he says, looking at a small note in his hand. Same floor as me. I close the door and watch him as the elevator ascends. He is bald, first of all, but I assume he shaved because he still looked decently young, about my age. His white suit was a bit dirty and messy, and his red tie seemed loose and neglected. He wore black khakis that were worn mildly at the feet. He began adjusting his suit, fidgeting over small details. "Sorry, they kinda just told me about an hour ago to get here," he said. "They said they needed another tech-savvy kinda guy and I'm going up now to meet him." I smiled. Already I liked this guy. Polite, neat (at least he tried to look neat, who knows what he went through before he came here), and seemed intelligent. I couldn't get much from him, hopefully his interview would go well. The elevator doors eased open, and we walked around the corner as I slid my key into the door, opening it. The man checked the note in his hand before making an audible 'Oh.' "Oh, it's you!" he exclaims, and I gesture for him to walk in. "Mike," I say, "My name is Mike."

* * *

**leik commnt ad subscrb if u thnk mike is 1337 at teknolgy or 2skrub**

**No not really, but feedback would be appreciated. I've set up the story better, and I hope you guys will enjoy it as it goes. **


	3. Update - Bad News

Unfortunate news.

I've been working extra hard to write chapters. I had 6 chapters for All the Difference written up and ready to upload, and I had the next chapter and three branching chapters done for Fortressbound. I had all of these chapters saved to my Notes on my iPhone. It makes it easier to write stories whenever I have time to, and they're easy to upload. However, my iPhone had completely crashed recently, and I had to restore it to factory default. With no backup and absolutely no idea of why it crashed in the first place, I pretty much lost all of my stories. Completely.

Am I upset? Yes, but I'm certainly not going to just give up. After all, these are my stories, I made the plot, damnit.

But it will take some time to... collect, after this. It's definitely going to take some time to go back through the stories and rewrite them. In my head, it's playing out more complex than the Legend of Zelda timeline. I'll probably just reread the stories to remember exactly where they leave off. It'll be a good thing, considering it gives me a chance to check for grammatical errors, any confusing portions, or general areas that can be better written.

It's just been pretty tough for me. I'm spending more time working on animation and 3D modeling, and as the projects I make build up, so do the issues and frustrations. I spent the past 43 hours waiting for a large project I've been working on to finish rendering in 3DS Max, when the program suddenly crashes at the last frame, corrupting the entire video and leaving it unplayable. So now, I have to go through it and figure out why it happened, then re-do it all over again... I also have been working on an SFM project that has been continually crashing on me due to a significant lack of stability on SFM's part. School projects on Microsoft Word keep corrupting or just disappearing on me, Garry's Mod's been bugging out continuously, I've been anxious about whether not my job application will be accepted, I'm nervous about driving, and my Project M was corrupted after my brother put a different game in the Wii that overwrote almost everything on the SD card. To some that might mean nothing, but Project M/Smash Bros is a very important thing for me. I had replays, a completed challenge panel, and Classic completed on hard with almost every character. And all of it is wiped out now.

Again, I'm not just going to give up and leave these stories to rot, but I need to get myself together and find time to write again. I'm juggling too much right now to focus on one thing, and writing stories is definitely not on the top of the list. But eventually, I'll update everything, back up all of my chapters, and get back to writing. I've grown to enjoy writing too much to just give it up now.

Sorry for me taking so long to update anything.


	4. Please Understand

A while back I explained that my iPhone, which contained all of my stories and chapters, had to be reset, resulting in me losing everything.

I've looked into it, and discovered my iPhone simply suffered on iOS 7's behalf. The operating system simply isn't optimized for an iPhone 4, and it crashed. The boot files were likely corrupted, explaining why I couldn't restart my iPhone. But that's not what I wanted to talk about, even though it's probably the only reason I felt like I should bring this up. If you don't want to read all of this, or you simply don't care, at least consider reading the bottom.

* * *

It's been a long time since I've been on this website. I know my stories, but I often forget you guys have yet to see them. Yet to see what makes me love to write. When I write, my imagination gets a rare opportunity to come alive. Writing is what makes me feel comfortable showing who I am to the world. With friends and in games, I'm the loud, obnoxious one, cracking jokes all the time, because I know my friends. I know it's ok for my jokes to be outright stupid at times, because it's my friends, or just some people on the internet. That personality doesn't carry over to the real world. I'm shy, I'm always in the back of the class by choice, I don't volunteer. The real world scares me. I've seen what happens. I've seen things I wish I hadn't. Things I wished were just video games. Writing is different. When you write a story, anything that happens is entirely up to you. You don't have to worry about how a character acts, because it's your mind, your choice, and the only people affected by that choice is other characters in your story. You don't have to worry about it sucking, or if someone finds an action weird or 'different,' because you made it that way on purpose. All you have to worry about when you write is whether or not you spell a word right.

I can recall many times where I can say I went out of my comfort zone for something and was proud of the result. In elementary school, I remember signing up for Band in 4th grade. I was always drawn towards drums, but had no confidence in my playing. Now, I can play anything I want and just not give a damn. I remember playing Smash on the Nintendo 64 at my daycare in preschool. It led to me getting a Gamecube and a copy of Smash Bros Melee. Brawl of course followed on the Wii, but when it came to playing competitive, it happened again; I was worried I wasn't good enough. Now, I happily enjoy Project M and Smash 4 competitively. As a kid grateful to have a decent PC, I played Battlefield and Halo on it, almost exclusively. But I only played for fun. I'd play 2142BF just to enjoy the Titan mode. I played Halo 1/CE to death because of how much I adored being part of the community. But, soon BF Bad Company came along. All my 2142 friends soon moved to it's more serious style. Halo 2 came out for PC, and it was just too competitive and serious for me. As a kid with few social skills, I found things that made me show skill I had yet to perfect daunting. If you compared me as a kid to how I am today, it'd be like two different people: then, I was enjoying being the nerd kid, playing games because I thought they were just cool or because they were fun, in addition to zero musical or mental confidence; now, I'm playing CS GO competitively, planning my career to being an adult, learning guitar alongside playing in a senior school drumline, enjoying life and friends. Having a social life, even as frail as it is. It's something I wish I had as a kid. Because the only thing I ended up finding true confidence in was writing and drawing.

As a kid, not much phases you. You might write a poem for school, or draw a picture of your family, and Mom or Dad'll say they love it and stick it to the fridge. Are your writing/drawing skills great at a 2nd Grade level? Probably not. In fact, you'd have to be sugar coating saying those skills weren't good. But for me, that scared me. Knowing that writing and drawing, two things I felt were like breathing to me, were usually crappy at that age. It lead me to do almost nothing but read the hardest books I could find, get every drawing book I could get my hands on. I purposefully pushed myself to learn to write and draw to the best of my ability, and never stopped. It affected most of my life. I isolated myself from friends, ignoring them until I could get a type of shading right, or write an interesting page of fiction. I can count the amount of friends I had from preschool to middle school total with one hand of fingers. I hated feeling like I wasn't good enough at something, pushing away everything else to get it right, and it only comes to me now that I think about it that, sometimes, my overimagination and lack of confidence led to losing quite a few chances to better improve my life. I'd get 100s on tests, but grades would slip because I'm too busy doodling an idea I had in the margins of what would be that night's homework, or writing some silly story into the back of my binder, completely forgetting to write down anything at all for that class. I'd embarrass myself in class for drifting off. Do you know how it feels to have an entire class of judging faces stare at you as you struggle to answer the very first question because you simply couldn't hold your concentration? Not just once, but almost every day? It destroys any desire to speak up. I remember every year I'd be one row farther back in the class when we picked our seats. An entire life bound to the twisted focus I had, with minimal chance of enjoying a normal childhood. I'd get so focused on one thing, and still do today, I would forget everything else.

However, this lack of a 'normal' life led me to become very fond of the skills I did end up with. I could pick up any game and master it with minimal time, whether it be puzzle, fighting, shooter, etc. If I wanted to, I could learn everything possible about the game, and most likely exceed the skill of many friends that have played it longer than me. I became incredibly ahead of my art classes, twice skipping to higher grade art classes because my grade's class simply wasn't enough. I never had a writing assignment with a score below an A, sometimes going beyond the expectations and getting extra credit for many of them. I'm almost always at the top of my music classes, even helping the teacher when they can't explain or play something to another student. Of course, I also can't forget how I've taught myself how to 3D model and animate in little over a couple years from school computers alone. These are all the few things I can say I am proud of. They're what I can say "I know that, and I can do that" to. So when one of these skills are taken away, it's like if someone took out a large part of what makes you, well, you, and forced you to deal with it.

As a kid, I was incredibly fond of drums, as I mentioned. I could find a drum, pick it up, and play something I heard on the radio or something made up in my head with little difficulty. Noticing this, my parents bought me a full drumset. At the time, it was probably the best thing I ever received in my life. My sister got me a book full of drum rudiments, as well as sheet music for many rock songs. Within a few weeks, I learned these songs with little difficulty. The rudiments became second nature to me, as I practiced for almost an hour every night. However, this hobby became a chore as time went on. I wanted to take a small break from drumming to focus on other things, but my parents told me I had to practice every night, sometimes not allowing me to do anything else until I practiced my rudiments and songs for about 45 minutes. Within a few years, I went from loving my drumset to loathing it. Today, I have no interest whatsoever in touching that drumset, as it sits in the basement collecting dust, a drumstick bag with 40 pairs of drumsticks next to it, never to be used again. It became a part of my life I didn't want. And just like that, drumming became something I prefer not doing unless I'm alone, or in drumline at school. Video games were the same deal, however the loathing was my fault. I'd learn a game until I was able to master it, which means that if I couldn't learn it, I would get frustrated. It would nag at me, knowing I couldn't learn it. I hate Melee just as much as I love it. I absolutely crushed the single player portions of the games, and would typically win when I played casually with friends. But when I learned about l-canceling, wavedashing, multishining, and pivoting, they became the only thing I cared about in Melee. I didn't care if I won a game, I only cared if I won from whatever technique I'd try to use to teach myself these foreign gameplay mechanics, even though at a young age I simply didn't have the muscle reflexes to perform such quick maneuvers. To this day, I cringe to myself with every missed hit in Smash 4, or every missed tec or bad read, knowing I could have easily done better had I not done something stupid.

Writing and drawing mean a lot more to me, and it destroys me when something hinders my ability to do either.

As a kid with a DSi, it's safe to say I exclusively used it for Flipnote Studio. Flipnote was a 2D animation program where you would draw out whatever you wanted on to each frame, which would in turn be played like an animation, with the ability to add sound and color being additional features. I would spend day and night on animations, drawings, everything. It probably brought me the most joy at the time because you were able to upload your Flipnotes to a community called Hatena, where other animators could meet and share.

However, DSi's aren't meant to last. Buttons slowly stopped working, and the touch screen would become less responsive. I would do literally everything I could to get things working, but in the end, I was left with virtually no tools aside from the given pen sizes, a broken top screen, and an incredibly unresponsive bottom screen. It made making Flipnotes frustrating, almost pointless. Nothing I made had any polish, as I couldn't get precise with such a glitchy touchscreen, and I couldn't use in-tool features as they stopped working. I ended up seeing animating as a chore, something I just wanted to get done with.

Writing, however, meant much, much more. I have notebooks on top of notebooks of stories, scenes, ideas, characters, and plots absolutely filling every paper inside. It was probably the most worked-on thing I ever did in my life, writing those stories; designing those characters, making these complex storylines, they all felt the most important to me over everything. As time went on, I literally ran out of paper to write freely on. With no extra paper or notes to write stories on, the drive to write began to fade. It wasn't until I found this website that the old feeling came back. That old desire to write something great. Because when I wrote, I didn't care how it turned out, because it could always be changed whenever I felt like it. It led me to take a shot at writing, which paved the road for the L4D2 fanfiction 'Jason.' You wanna know how many times I've updated, replaced, and removed numerous chapters in that story? I do too, because I lost track of the countless times I've rewritten entire chapters to it. Even now, that story in my opinion is quite terrible. It was a rushed piece I wanted to write just to get it out there while the idea was fresh. There's a good chance I'll probably redo that story again, it always has room for improvement, as with any story. I grew to love it. I saw reviews by people on how they actually liked it. It was huge to me! All these old ideas, stories I thought were far too silly to actually dive deeper into, grew, and I began going crazy with this enjoyment of storywriting. I would start making schedules to keep track of what chapter I'd upload and when, when I would post a new story, when I could finalize storylines. When I could do this, when I could do that. When. When.

When I would desperately try to recover my notes when I realized my iPhone was basically ruined.

When I would become incredibly depressed, losing pages upon pages of stories I worked months on.

When I would consider giving up entirely on writing, as I have with so many other dreams.

When I would realize I was foolish to think it would get anywhere.

And yet... here I am. Relogging into this account, checking for anything I missed, catching up on old stories I never finished reading. When I saw my stories as I scrolled through L4D2 fanfics, they called out to me. "I'm still here," they would say. I couldn't watch them just become more unfinished fanfics, lost in this massive website. I decided then that, no matter what boundary, I'd rebuild. Writing became such a huge aspect of my life, I couldn't see it go to waste.

I'm not fully sure why I wrote this. I guess it's just something I needed to say. Or maybe it's just my way of getting my opinion out there.

Or it could be my message, here, to anybody else who feels like nothing is working for them.

Odds are you didn't read everything here. You might have skimmed, or just skipped to the bottom here, but no matter what, I hope you remember this:

**Don't be scared of failure. Don't be afraid of being made fun of, or ignored. Because no matter how much dedication you put into something, no matter how much of your life's effort you want to put into it, it will not be a smooth ride. There will be failure. You will fail, or hit rock bottom. But it's not a reason to give up. Once you've hit the bottom, there's nothing worse waiting for you. Don't give up on your dream. Hopefully, your dreams don't suck up your life like mine do. But don't let a failure destroy it. Build off of it. Let your imagination bring your dream to new heights. **

Make it your story. This is my story.

What's yours?


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